


Breaking Boredom

by hummerhouse



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Complete, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:38:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2032176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummerhouse/pseuds/hummerhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disclaimer: The TMNT are not mine. No money being made.<br/>Story Word Count: 14,653<br/>Summary: Mikey's wish for adventure is granted, but not exactly as he'd hoped for.<br/>Rated: PG-13</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            Mikey stood in the doorway to the kitchen and watched Don walk out of his lab, cross over to the tide pool, and then kneel next to it.

            Leaning against the doorframe, Mikey took a bite from his banana and observed his brother with some curiosity.  Raph and Leo were out on a patrol because they had wanted to stretch their legs and Master Splinter had gone to bed.

            Michelangelo was pretty bored and had just started thinking that he probably should have joined his brothers, even though his main reason for not going with them was that he didn’t feel like playing referee for one of their arguments.

            Don bent down and dipped something into the pool, bringing it up to the light so that he could look at it.  From his position, Mikey could see that it was a glass test tube.

            When his genius brother got up and headed back to the lab, Mikey tossed the banana peel into the garbage can and proceeded to follow him.

            Don hadn’t bothered to close the door and Mikey trailed into the lab, unbeknownst to the purple banded Turtle.  Placing the test tube into a tray, Don grabbed a syringe and suctioned out a small quantity of the liquid, which he then deposited on a glass slide.

            Situating the slide under a microscope, Don leaned over to examine the water.  The corners of his mouth drew down and he removed the slide, replacing it with another from a labeled container.

            Thoroughly interested now, Mikey moved closer and blurted out, “Is there something wrong with our pool?”

            “Gahh!” Don jumped, nearly overturning the microscope.  Clutching at it quickly, Don steadied the piece of equipment before turning a harsh look onto his brother.

            “You know better than to sneak up on me like that,” Don scolded him.

            Mikey shrugged.  “Is there some other way to sneak up on you?”

            “How about you don’t do it period,” Don told him, turning back to continue his perusal of the slide.

            Sidling closer, Mikey asked, “You didn’t answer my question; did you find something in the water?”

            Don frowned, his eyes still firmly pressed to the microscope’s eyepieces.  “This slide is from a water sample I took a month ago; I draw samples monthly to monitor the clarity of the water in the tide pool.  The water in that pool never changes, Mikey.  It doesn’t matter if we’ve had more rain than usual, or if there’s been an oil leak from a tanker, or any number of other things; the water never changes.”

            Mikey propped his hip against Don’s desk and crossed his arms over his plastron.  “’Cause of the crystals, right?” he asked.

            Straightening, Don glanced at his brother and nodded.  “Crystals embedded in the walls forming the containment ring for our pool keep the water clean.  Up until a month ago I’ve never seen the slightest difference in the purity of the water.”

            “But a month ago you did?” Mikey prompted.

            Don pointed at the container his slide had come from and said, “I’ve been pulling a sample each day since then.  There was a very mild cloudiness to the water from this sample, so I pulled another the next day.  That one was perfectly clear, and so was the sample from the day after that.  But on the third day, I drew another cloudy sample and it was just a little worse than the first one.  It took thirty-six hours for the crystals to clean the water.

            “Two days later, the murkiness reappeared and the original clarity hasn’t returned since then.  Tonight’s sample is the worst by far.  Something is contaminating our water.”

            “Something like what?” Mikey wanted to know.  “I bet you know what it is.”

            Don sighed.  “If I could get my hands on more modern test equipment I could give you a more definitive answer on that.  The testing I was capable of doing show me high levels of toxic chemicals and a couple of the samples test positive for radioactivity.”

            The last word had Mikey straightening up.  “Uh, radioactivity isn’t a good thing, Donny.”

            His brother reached into a drawer and brought out the hand held Geiger counter he’d purchased with April’s assistance.  Holding it near the test tube containing the sample he’d just extracted, Don watched as the digital readout displayed a number.

            Frowning, he walked past Mikey and back out to the tide pool, with his younger brother on his heels.  Kneeling once more, Don held the Geiger counter over the pool and an audible beep greeted both of them, along with a new set of numbers on the readout.

            Standing slowly, Don gave Mikey a perplexed look.  “I shouldn’t have gotten a reading from that small sample I took,” he said by way of explanation.  “The radioactive levels haven’t been all that high.  For some reason tonight the levels have spiked.  This is bad, bro’.”

            “So let’s find out what’s contaminating our water,” Mikey said.  “We know where the water flows in from, couldn’t we like, backtrack it?”

            Don stared at him for a moment as though debating the wisdom of such a foray.  The beeping sound of his Geiger counter suddenly reminded Don that he couldn’t simply study the phenomenon any longer; it had gotten to a point where an investigation needed to be made.

            “Let me grab my bag,” Don said, turning back towards his lab.

            Mikey waited for Don at the door into the sewers.  His boredom was gone, replaced by the excitement of an adventure, although he wasn’t thrilled by the radioactive part of their newest mystery.

            When Don joined him, the genius had his large duffel bag slung over his shoulder and the Geiger counter in his hand.

            Don saw Mikey glance at it.  “Don’t worry, the levels are too low to do us any harm unless you decide to ingest a couple of gallons of the tainted water.  I’ll let you know if it gets high enough for us to get the shell away from it.”

            Running for a couple of miles through the tunnels, Don and Mikey reached the point where the two branches of water from the river that fed their pool intersected.

            “Which one do we follow?” Mikey asked.

            Don’s Geiger counter was already in his hand.  Choosing one of the branches, Don walked alongside it for ten feet and then checked for radioactivity.  When he received no readout, he backtracked and then proceeded alongside the second stream of water until he was again at the ten foot mark.

            This time the beep was loud and clear.  Pointing upstream, Don answered, “This one.”

            He was moving as he spoke and Mikey had to jump to catch up to him.

            They had run for nearly two miles and were approaching the inlet pipe that brought river water into the city’s water treatment plant and by Y’Lyntian engineering into their tide pool as well.  Don’s eyes were fixed on his Geiger counter, but Mikey was looking ahead of them and therefore saw the flashing lights first.

            Reaching out quickly, he grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled Don to a stop.

            “What?” Don asked before following Mikey’s pointing finger.

            As soon as he saw the light bounce off the concrete containment walls of the pipe, he dropped into a crouch, turning the Geiger counter off so the beep wouldn’t give them away.  Mikey was down as well and after a quick glance at Don, he began to inch forward slowly.

            When they were nearly at the opening, they both began to hear the low rumble of voices; intermittent speech that told of terse instruction rather than conversation.  Don hugged the concrete wall on one side of the pipe and Mikey the other, the stream of water flowing between them.

            Peering out, the first thing they saw were men wearing full body hazardous material suits, their faces hidden by breathing masks.  Some stood and held high powered flashlights to illuminate the river’s edge, while others rolled fat metal barrels down the embankment.

            As each barrel came to a stop, it was lifted on its end so that the seal could be removed and the top pulled off.  Once completely open, the barrel was tipped over into the water and the contents seeped out; a dark viscous liquid that took several long minutes to drain.

            The emptied barrels were recapped and taken back up the embankment to a pair of waiting trucks.  The men moved with quick efficiency, obviously aware that time was pressing and their task was imminently dangerous and extremely illegal.

            “They’re dumping toxic chemicals into the river,” Don whispered in a tone that indicated his amazement.

            Mikey glanced at him and almost laughed.  His brother was a genius, but sometimes he could be a little naïve.  It was an endearing quality of Don’s that he preferred to see the good in humanity rather than the evil, but it was also the reason that they sometimes had to give Don a jump start to get him fighting.

            “Yeah, Donny, toxic _radioactive_ chemicals,” Mikey reminded him.

            “We have to stop them,” Don said, his voice indicating his determination.

            Mikey grinned.  One thing about Don, when he finally did decide that something had to be done he was like a heavy boulder rolling downhill.  There was no stopping him.

            “I would have suggested we go out there and knock ‘em out then call the police,” Mikey said, “but they’re packing up to leave.”

            The last of the barrels was being placed into a truck and the men had all walked up the embankment to climb in with them.  The engine on the first truck started and it pulled away, headlights off.

            One last man stood next to the second truck and played his light over the ground near the water, no doubt checking that they’d left nothing behind that would give them away.  Apparently satisfied, he snapped off his flashlight and turned to open the driver’s side door.

            Before he got in he began to remove his hazmat suit and that’s when Donatello shot out of the pipe, running silently for the back of the truck.  The hiss he had given Mikey was his younger brother’s only warning that Don had a plan and Mike had no choice but to dart after him.

            Just as the truck started, Don leaped onto the back bumper followed a second later by Mikey.

            “What are we doing, Don?” Mikey asked, a little surprised by his brother’s action.

            “We’re going straight to the source,” Don said grimly.  “Those barrels have river mud on them and that’s proof enough that they dumped the contents into the water.  We aren’t going to let them clean up the evidence and we’re going to shut down their operations.”

            “I really, really like that idea,” Mikey said conversationally, “but are we gonna do it alone?  ‘Cause this might turn out to be a team sized chore and you know how cranky Raph and Leo get when we leave them out of the fun.”

            Don smiled.  “Let’s get up top first so we aren’t so conspicuous, then you can give them a call.”

            Grabbing the top edge of the truck, the brothers easily pulled themselves onto the roof of the moving vehicle.  Lying flat, they held on as the truck turned off the bumpy gravel road and onto a paved access street, heading towards the highway.

            Mikey dug out his shell cell, but when he opened it loud static bounced back at him.

            “What the shell?” he grumbled, pressing several buttons before looking over at Don in puzzlement.

            “Hang on,” Don grabbed his cell phone and tried to place a call, but was met by the same loud static.

            “Why do I get the feeling you’re gonna tell me ‘Mikey, we’re on our own’?” Mikey asked.

            “It must be the residual radioactivity that’s scrambling our signals,” Don said.

            “I like the sound of that even less,” Mikey told him.

            Don got the Geiger counter out and checked the display.  “We’re all right; the readings are still within an acceptable range.”

            “Acceptable to who?” Mikey asked.  “I don’t wanna end up as a glowing mutant ninja turtle, Donny.  That kinda thing sorta screws up your ability to follow the way of invisibility.”

            “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when it gets to the point where you’re about to turn into a glow stick,” Don said with a laugh.

            “In the meantime we’re headed to parts unknown with no way to tell our bro’s where we’ve gone,” Mikey said.

            “Once we move away from these trucks we should be able to phone them,” Don said.  “Until then, we should pay attention to where we’re going.”

            Mikey looked up at the street signs flashing by and said, “With our luck, we’re gonna end up in Jersey.”

            “You’re the one who’s always fussing that we never go anywhere,” Don said.

            “Jersey doesn’t count,” Mikey retorted.

            “Don’t be such a pessimist,” Don told him.

            “Oh, okay Donatello.  It’s not like we just jumped on top of a truck full of radioactive goop and very unfriendly people,” Mikey said sarcastically.

            “Just exactly who was it that said ‘let’s find out what’s contaminating our water’?” Don asked.

            “That was boredom talking,” Mikey said darkly.

            “Well for once your boredom was right,” Don said.  “We had to investigate and now we have to stop the contamination, not just for our safety but for a whole lot of other people as well.”

            Mikey perked up.  “Hero time?  Aw man, I left my Turtle Titan uniform at the lair.”

            “Thank goodness for small favors,” Don muttered.  “I think this is a job for something a little more low key, Mikey.”

            “Cool.  I’m gonna go ninja on them,” Mikey said, his eyes half shut as he daydreamed.

            “I can hardly wait,” Don said dryly.

            “It’s okay Donny, I’ll leave some for you,” Mikey told him magnanimously.

            “You’re a real sport bro’.”  Don was grinning.  “You don’t mind if I still go ahead and call for backup?”

            “Whatever flips your switch,” Mikey said.

            Don shook his head and then made a note of the highway they were on.  Despite Mikey’s new optimism, Don had a feeling that they had just walked into a very bad situation.

            Amend that; they were _riding_ into a very bad situation and they were doing it alone and far from home.

            Jumping on the back of this truck was beginning to look like a fairly rash decision and Don made a mental note to start leaving that kind of thing to Raph.  It was more his cup of tea.

TBC……….


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Word Count: 4,302  
> Rated: PG-13

            Mikey was lying flat on his carapace, staring up at the night sky and humming a tune, his toes moving to the beat.  Don could not figure out for the life of him how his brother could possibly be comfortable.

            Stretched out on his plastron atop the moving truck, Don’s hands were pressed into the roof so that he wouldn’t slide off if they turned a corner.  Mikey seemed completely unconcerned about that possibility.  The fact was though, if they did stop suddenly or make a sharp turn, Michelangelo would somehow remain rooted in place.  His athleticism was both unnerving and a little infuriating.

            Mikey did have the good graces to at least stop humming when the truck they were on took an off ramp from the highway.  Don was trying to pay attention to signs and mile markers so he’d know where they were, but either he’d missed a few, or there weren’t any.

            They passed through two sets of stop lights while on the access road before the truck turned right onto a narrow street, one which was in some disrepair judging from the jouncing they did.  Don began to have a new worry that Mikey’s shell hitting the roof would call someone’s attention to the fact that they had attracted a pair of stowaways.  Just as he had that thought, Mikey flipped over and grinned at him, flattening his palms to hold himself in position.

            The darkness was complete in this area of the city; no houses or buildings, no streetlights, and no other vehicles.  By Donatello’s estimate they’d ridden for nearly six miles before the truck turned again, this time into a driveway that was a lot smoother than the street they’d been on.

            Rolling up to a high fence, the lead truck’s brake lights came on and both trucks idled as they waited for the electric gate to roll aside.  When the truck that the Turtles were on passed through, Don turned his head and saw the gate closing behind them.

            Both trucks drove across a wide parking lot, heading straight for a low, sprawling metal building.  Two men dressed in security guard uniforms stood on either side of an opening that was large enough to drive through and watched as the first truck pulled in, followed closely by the second.

            As the trucks parked next to each other in the warehouse sized space, the guards operated controls that caused a heavy metal door to slide down and seal off the entry.

            Don and Mikey waited in silence as the drivers exited the trucks.  A minute later, the back doors on both vehicles swung open and the men that had ridden with the barrels jumped out, all of them still dressed in their hazmat suits.

            “Straight to the showers, guys.  You know the drill,” one of the guards said.

            The drivers grabbed their suits out of the trucks and followed the other men as they filed out of the garage.  Two more guards entered once the workers had left.

            “You checked the trucks yet?” one of the newcomers asked.

            “Just about to,” a guard answered, pulling on thick rubber gloves.

            As the other three guards followed suit, Mikey slid closer to Don and whispered, “They’re gonna find us up here.”

            Don shook his head.  “Don’t worry Mikey, they never look on top of a truck,” he whispered back reassuringly.

            They heard the doors in the front and back slam as the guards checked over the trucks.  Then one of them said, “Joe, the mirror’s over in the corner.  Check underneath both of them.  We’ll climb up and take a look on top.”

            Mikey shot Don a dirty look before sitting up silently.  Don did likewise, the sheepish expression on his face missed by Mikey who was trying to find a way off the truck without either of them being seen.

            A couple of minutes later, two guards checked over the tops of both trucks and found nothing.  When they jumped down, the four gathered near the door the workers had gone through.

            Pressing a button mounted beneath a speaker grill, one of the guards said, “All clear.  Go ahead and open up.”

            High above them in the metal rafters, two ninja’s watched as a double door at the back of the room slid open.  A man in white coveralls approached the first truck, climbed into the cab, and drove the truck into a room filled with water and steam.

            Just before the door slid closed, the Turtle’s heard someone say, “Unload it and scrub everything down.  Get a move on; we have to do two of them tonight.”

            When the door shut off the sounds from the truck wash, the guards exited the garage.

            Extremely agitated, Don looked over at Mikey and said, “They’re going to clean everything, including the barrels.”

            “So?” Mikey asked, not sure why his brother was so excited.

            “So if they do that, our proof that they’ve been illegally dumping waste into the river is gone,” Don answered.  “We have to preserve some of that evidence.”

            Mikey looked at the truck just below them and said, “I’m open to suggestions, bro’.  I just hope you aren’t thinking about stealing that truck.  Those guys were armed, in case you didn’t notice.”

            “No, I have a better idea,” Don said just before swinging down from the high ceiling and landing cat-like on the floor below.

            When Mikey dropped to the ground he saw that Don was making his way over to a row of lockers.  Swinging open one of the doors, Don pawed through the contents and then moved to the next locker.  In the fourth locker over he located what he’d been looking for; hazmat suits in an extra-large size.

            “Here, put this on,” Don directed, tossing one of the suits to Mikey.

            Mikey held it up and gave it the once over before glancing at Don.  His brother had set his bo staff and duffel inside the locker and was carefully stepping into a second hazmat suit.

            Zipping the suit closed, Don adjusted the breathing mask over his face and looked up.  Mikey was still holding his mask as he tugged at the oversized suit and then twisted around to inspect his rear.

            “Hey, Donny, does this make me look fat?” Mikey asked with a grin.

            Don pursed his lips to avoid laughing and then said, “Why yes.  Yes it does.”

            “Aw man, I knew it,” Mikey said in mocking despair as he pulled the breathing mask on.

            Once they were completely outfitted in the safety gear, Don led the way over to the truck and pulled the back doors open.  Mounted on one side of the interior was a long bench seat and the rest of the space was filled with empty metal barrels.

            Don climbed inside and tipped one of the barrels slightly to test its weight.  Emptied of its contents, the barrel was easily managed by the strong turtle.  Choosing two barrels which still had residual river mud clinging to them, Don handed them down to Mikey and his brother set them aside.

            “They’re gonna notice those empty spaces dude,” Mikey pointed out before Don exited the truck.

            Don saw what Mikey meant; the barrels had been crammed into the space to get as many inside as possible, so the unoccupied area was now quite noticeable.

            “Hold on.  I’ll fix it,” Don said.

            Quickly rearranging the rest of the barrels so that there was a larger pocket of space between each of them, Don made the back of the truck appear completely full once more.  Satisfied that they’d left no signs of their presence behind, Don jumped down from the truck and closed the doors.

            “Now we got ‘em, what are we gonna do with ‘em?” Mikey asked.

            “We have to hide them until we can persuade the authorities to investigate,” Don said.

            “Great idea, Donny,” Mikey said with a touch of sarcasm.  “Where exactly were you planning to hide two large metal barrels that are probably radioactive?”

            Don stood still for a moment, his eyes scanning the warehouse.  Other than the lockers, which were too small anyway, there were no other hiding places.  Then he had a thought.

            “The best place to hide something is in plain sight, right Mikey?” Don asked rhetorically.  “We’ll hide these barrels amongst a bunch of clean ones.  They must have a place next door where they store the barrels they’ve already processed through the wash.”

            “Oh right,” Mikey said, “next door where a bunch of guys are running around cleaning the other truck and will probably be back for this one any second now.”

            “We can stand here debating the issue, or we can go investigate what we’re up against,” Don said, indicating a smaller exit in the wall next to the double door.  “That probably bypasses the truck wash itself so that someone doesn’t have to get wet to go inside.”

            For an answer, Mikey lifted one of the barrels and carried it over to the door.  Setting it down to one side, he waited while Don placed the other barrel next to it.  When Don reached for the door handle though, Mikey quickly grabbed his wrist.

            “Hey genius, have you given any thought to surveillance cameras?” Mikey asked.

            “I set my frequency jammer when we turned into the parking lot,” Don told him.  “It will interfere with the camera feed in this half of the building.  Hopefully we won’t be here long enough for them to start investigating something other than mechanical error.”

            “I hope you’re right, ‘cause in that suit you can’t carry your bo or your bag of tricks,” Mikey pointed out.  “You’re unarmed, dude.  That’s why my weapons are better; they’re tucked into my belt for easy access.”

            “The only problem is that you can’t unzip your suit to get at them,” Don said dryly.

            “Dude,” Mikey groaned and then his eyes widened.  “In case you hadn’t noticed, we can’t get to our shell cells either.  If you’re gonna call for the cavalry, we need to get out of these play suits and off to someplace where our phones will actually work.”

            “Let me see what’s behind the door first,” Don said, twisting the door handle and pulling the door open enough so that he could look through.

            To the left he could see a big wash bay, large enough to accommodate trucks.  The system was mostly automated; rollers pushing the truck through as jets of water and scrubbers mounted in the ceiling and walls worked on the exterior body.

            The back had been emptied and the doors left open.  Some of the barrels that had been in the truck were sitting on a pallet jack; the others were suspended upside down over a wide opening in the floor.  The one thing they all had in common was that they were now spotless.

            Directly in front of the door was a set of steps leading up to a long catwalk that went from the garage all the way to the back of the wash bay.  It ended at the door to the master control booth.

            To the right of the door, Don saw an area filled with clean barrels.  As he watched, two men pulled the pallet jack over to that space, passing under the catwalk to get there.  They unloaded the barrels, pushing them in with the others and then went back to the other side of the room.

            Closing the door carefully, Don said, “There’s a couple of guys cleaning barrels, but they’re across the room right now.  The clean barrels are off to the right and there’s a half wall blocking the view from the wash bay.  We can take these barrels up to the catwalk and then one of us jump down into the storage area while the other tosses the barrels to them.  If we set these in the center of a bunch of clean ones, no one will notice them.”

            “Then let’s go General, I don’t wanna stand around with these things any longer than I have to,” Mikey said.

            Once more cautiously opening the door, Don double checked that the area was clear before climbing the steps.  At the top he squatted low and looked over at the control booth.  Only one man was inside and he was reading a newspaper.

            Signaling to Mikey, Don leaned down to grab the barrels as his brother handed them up to him.  When Mikey joined him, they both stayed down low, sliding the barrels along the cat walk until they reached a point over an area packed solid with clean barrels.

            Mikey leaped down, landing silently atop the barrels and then wedged his way in between two of them.  Very carefully, he shifted an entire row until he’d made a space large enough for the two they wanted to hide.

            One by one, Don handed the barrels to Mikey and watched as his younger brother carefully slid them into the space he’d made.  Eyeing the placement critically, Don was happy to note that Mikey had chosen a spot that wouldn’t be too noticeable to someone walking along the catwalk.

            Before Mikey had a chance to rejoin his brother, the big door began to slide open.  Don flattened himself on the catwalk and hissed, “Get down; they’re bringing the other truck in.”

            Mikey ducked behind the barrels and watched as the other truck was driven into the wash bay.  The two men who had charge of the barrels began to empty the second truck and when Don glanced towards the control booth he saw that the man inside was still engrossed in his paper.

            Don waved Mikey forward and began crawling towards the stairs when Mikey landed on the catwalk behind him.  Taking the hint, Mikey dropped onto his plastron as well and in another minute the two brothers were back in the garage.

            “Can we take these suits off now?” Mikey asked, his hand reaching for the zipper.

            Don caught his arm and shook his head.  “Better stay in them until we’re ready to leave the building,” he said.  “We need to find out where we are before we can call the authorities.”

            “And our brothers,” Mikey added.  “I kinda doubt we’re gonna be able to hitch a ride back home dressed like this.”

            “We won’t be able to get one looking like ourselves either, Mikey,” Don said dryly.

            “That’s true.”  Mikey pointed towards the door that the guards had passed through and asked, “I guess we’re going that way?”

            “Seems to be our only option,” Don acknowledged as he turned in that direction.

            Carefully opening the door, Mikey peeked out and saw a long corridor.  To the right it was straight, but to the left it turned sharply.  Seeing no one, he stepped out and Don followed.

            “Which way?” Mikey asked.

            “Logically I’d say towards the left.  It seems to lead to the front of the building, where the executives usually have their offices,” Don said.

            “In case you haven’t noticed, there is a whole lot of unusual about this place,” Mikey told him.

            Don shrugged.  “You asked.”

            “Okay, left it is,” Mikey said and led the way.

            It didn’t take long before they came to the first door along the corridor but that turned out to be a lunchroom.  Mikey eyed the vending machines hungrily, the banana he’d eaten before leaving the lair a distant memory.  Don yanked on his arm and Mikey waved his regret at the snack food as he exited.

            They reached a set of bathrooms next and Don shook his head when Mikey pointed at the door to the men’s room.

            “You should have gone before we left home,” Don chided him, walking on ahead.

            “Sorry mom,” Mikey said, “didn’t have to then.”

            A few more feet took them out into a wide open space, complete with lounge chairs and a receptionist’s desk.  Mikey stepped around behind it and spotted a phone.

            “Hey, Don, couldn’t we call on this?” Mikey asked.

            Don peered over the desk at the phone.  “No, it’s the switchboard.  It’s been shut off for the night and forwarded to the security station.  Don’t touch it; we’ll find a phone elsewhere.”

            A bright light flashed past the double glass doors at the entrance and both turtles ducked.  When it disappeared, Mikey said, “We’re a little too visible right here, dude.  Time to move on.”

            On the other side of the room was another corridor and they both moved in that direction.  The first door they came to had a small plaque on it that said ‘L. Linder-Boggs, Vice-President’.

            “Bingo,” Don said.  “We should be able to find some answers in here.”

            Turning the door knob, he discovered it was locked.

            “Let me guess, your lock picking kit is in your bag?” Mikey asked.

            “Looks like I’ll have to do this the old fashioned way,” Don said.

            Gripping the door knob tightly, he gave it a hard right twist and something snapped.  Years of training with a bo staff had given Donatello wrists as strong as steel cable and breaking the lock was child’s play for him.

            Together they entered a modest sized office; windowless, the room held a desk behind which sat a large rolling chair, a filing cabinet, and two visitor’s chairs.  On the desk was a scattering of papers, some pens and pencils inside a cup, and a telephone.

            Mikey grabbed one of the chairs and shoved it beneath the busted door knob while Don removed his breathing mask before walking behind the desk.  With a relieved sigh, Mikey took his mask off and set it on the chair, watching as Don looked through the papers on and in the desk.

            “’Ace Medical Waste Storage’,” Don read off the letterhead excitedly.  “That explains a lot.”

            “That’s interesting why?” Mikey asked.

            Don looked up, his eyes shining.  “Medical _nuclear_ waste,” he answered.  “That’s why our shell cells wouldn’t work.  Diagnostic nuclear medicine produces medical radioactive waste that tends to contain, amongst other things, gamma ray emitters.  Gamma rays can interfere with communication devices such as cell signals.”

            “Aside from all that technobabble,” Mike said, “how dangerous is this medical waste?”

            “Radioactivity diminishes over a period of time dependent on the levels per mass or volume,” Don answered.  “Medical waste is considered low level waste and may only need to be stored for a period of months.”

            “So you’re saying someone pays them to store this stuff?  Why are they dumping it?” Mikey asked.

            Don held up some of the papers he’d found in one of the desk drawers.  “Well, just at a quick glance, they appear to have accepted more contracts than they actually have space for.  While they claim to use this entire facility for storage, in reality only a fraction of the space has been properly modified to pass EPA standards for this type of storage.

            “When the government inspectors come out, the guys here only show them the areas that are correctly retrofitted.  Even the wash bay has to adhere to government guidelines so that the water doesn’t flow into county sewer lines.”

            “This is a big place, Donny.  Wouldn’t the inspectors get suspicious if they only see the same areas over and over again?”  Mikey picked through the papers on the desk, his brow furrowed.

            “The number of inspectors is pretty small compared to the number of facilities they have to monitor.  Since this facility is rated to hold only low-level radioactive waste, they probably don’t see an inspector but once in a blue moon, and probably a different person every time,” Don said.

            Mikey looked up.  “It all comes down to greed, right?”

            Don nodded and said, “Yes.”

            “That kinda makes me mad,” Mikey said grimly.  “How do people like this sleep at night?”

            “Probably on very expensive beds,” Don answered.

            “So how do we get someone out here to shut these guys down?”  Mikey asked.

            Don pointed at the phone on the desk.  “The EPA has a twenty-four hour hot line.  We’ll call them and tell them what we saw.  Once we give them the exact spot where the dumping took place, they’ll be able to verify part of our story, which will make the remainder of it more believable.  If we use this phone they’ll think a whistle blower is turning his employer in for violations and that will help spur the investigation as well.”

            “Do we tell them where we hid the barrels?” Mikey asked.

            “We’ll tell them they should check all of the barrels, including the ones in the clean room,” Don said.  “We shouldn’t have to spell the job out to them at that point.”

            “That’s good,” Mikey said as he lifted the receiver and pressed zero for an operator, “I’m ready for this adventure to end.”

            Don realized which button Mikey had chosen a second too late.  He was reaching for the phone when a voice answered, “Security.”

            Frantically signaling, Don indicated that Mikey should hang up.

            “Whoops, sorry! Wrong extension,” Mikey said and cradled the phone.

            “It all goes through the central switchboard unless you dial the outside line access number,” Don explained.  “They’re going to know exactly where that call came from.”

            “Now you tell me,” Mikey said as he leaped across the room, grabbing his face mask before pulling the chair away from the door.  “Let’s go someplace where we can use _our_ phones.”

            Don slid his mask back on, pulling the door shut behind him.  Mikey was already moving, going down the corridor away from the main reception area and Don swiftly followed.

            “Where are you going?” Don asked.

            “Gotta be a way to cut back around to the garage without having to pass through the lobby,” Mikey said.  “We can grab your gear, chuck these suits, and get the shell out of this building.”

            “That actually sounds like a splendid idea,” Don told him.

            They were both jogging at this point, the pressing need to get away foremost in both of their minds.  Coming up on a cross-corridor, Mikey pointed to indicate they should turn right.

            As they rounded the corner, the pair almost ran head on into a cluster of armed security guards.

            Sliding to a stop, Don spun around quickly as Mikey back flipped away from the guards.  They managed no more than a couple of steps before another group of guards appeared to block the corridor in front of them.

            “Shell,” Mikey hissed, lifting his fists defensively.

            The guards immediately pointed their guns directly at him and Don reached over, placing his hand atop Mikey’s arms and urging him to lower them.

            “We’re not armed,” Don said in an even tone.

            “Move,” one of the guards said, waving his gun to indicate direction.

            The guards stepped aside to line the corridor as the brothers, hands up, walked past them.  Two guards stayed ahead of them, out of reach but positioned so that their captives couldn’t make a break for it.

            It wasn’t long before they came to another set of doors that the guards opened, standing back as a sign that Don and Mikey were to proceed.  When they hesitated and glanced at each other, one of the guards pushed his gun against Mikey’s carapace and shoved.

            “Hey, no need to be rude,” Mikey said as he looked back at the man.

            “Move,” the guard insisted.

            “I guess they only know that one word,” Mikey said as he walked through the doors.

            “Mikey, please,” Don said, and then as he looked ahead of them, added, “I’ll bet he knows a few more words.”

            A very large and muscular man stood behind a gigantic mahogany desk, his fists resting on his hips.  His glare passed over them and landed on one of the guards.

            “Why didn’t you see these intruders on the security cameras?” the man demanded.

            “We are having some problems with the cameras, Mr. Highsmith,” the guard answered.  “It’s possible these two meddled with our security systems somehow, but we haven’t found anything yet.”

            Highsmith turned the glare back to the Turtles.  “Why are you here?”

            Don spoke up first.  “I think you know why.  Your illegal dumping of toxic waste into the river is endangering lives and the environment.  Don’t you know how many people could be sickened?  Don’t you realize how many people might die?”

            Mikey watched Highsmith’s face grow red and leaned towards his brother, who he could tell was fired up as well.

            “Um, Opstay askingway estionsquay,” Mikey told him in pig Latin.

            “Are you from a newspaper?” Highsmith asked.  “Undercover police?”

            “We’re concerned citizens,” Don answered before Mikey could stop him.

            Highsmith chuckled lowly.  “Ah, that’s good then.  No one will miss you.”

            “Way to go, Donny,” Mikey mumbled.

            “We have family who will come looking for us,” Don said.  “People will start to investigate your little racket.”

            “Since you were trying to call out, I’m going to take a chance on guessing you haven’t told anyone where you are,” Highsmith said with a smirk.  “Trust me when I say your bodies will never be found.”

            “You aren’t going to get away with this,” Don said.  “No one ever does.”

            “Nice comeback to ‘I’m about to kill you’,” Mikey muttered.

            “Take those suits off; I want to see your faces,” Highsmith ordered with a significant glance at the guards.

            The guns came up again, directed at the pair to make it obvious that Highsmith wasn’t making a request.  Don and Mikey looked at each other, both realizing the situation they were in.

            Not only were they about to be made extinct but their secret, their _family’s_ secret, was also about to be revealed.

            “Still bored Mikey?” Don asked as he reached for his zipper.

TBC…….       


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Word Count: 4,324  
> Rated: PG-13

            Mikey lifted a hand to the zipper of his hazmat suit when he saw Donatello doing the same.

            “I should go first,” Mikey said meaningfully, his eyes conveying a message to his brother as he slowly began to unzip the suit.

            “Be my guest,” Don replied in complete understanding.

            Don’s hands came up slowly, palms out as he lifted them to shoulder height.  The movement drew the guard’s eyes away from Michelangelo.

            In that fraction of a second, Mikey’s hand dipped into his belt and came out with two smoke pellets, which he threw onto the floor in front of them.

            As smoke immediately billowed up, the brothers moved.  Already in position, Don threw a right cross into the chin of the guard closest to him.  When the man hit the ground, Don stepped on him as he ran for the exit.

            Mikey lowered a shoulder and barreled into the nearest guard, shoving him against the next guard over.  Someone fired a shot that went into the ceiling and Mikey felt plaster hit the back of his suit as he dove for the door.

            “Don’t shoot you idiots!” Highsmith yelled.  “Dammit!  I can’t see anything!”

            Mikey caught up to Don in the corridor, not bothering to look back to see if they were being followed yet.

            “You got some sort of plan, Donny?” Mikey asked breathlessly.

            “For right now, running sounds good,” Don said, making a sharp turn at the first corner they came to.

            When Don stripped his hazmat suit off of himself and tossed it away, Mikey did so too.  Although the suit and oxygen mask didn’t weigh much, their removal made him feel much more buoyant.

            Don made another quick turn as they began to distance themselves from the guards. 

            “Going back to the garage?”  Mikey asked, recognizing the pattern of turns that Don was making.

            “Yeah, that seems like a . . . .”  Don suddenly stopped talking and running at the same time.

            Mikey was several paces ahead before he realized that Don was no longer next to him.  Turning quickly, he saw the genius standing at the top of a very short set of steps.  As Don started down, Mikey caught up to him.

            “What are you doing?” Mikey demanded.  “If we stay here we’re gonna get caught.”

            “I want to know what’s behind this,” Don said, pointing at a cobweb covered metal door.  A large padlock was hooked through the hasp that held the door closed, all of it dusted with a light film of grime.

            Rather than argue with his brother, Mikey pulled one of the nunchucks from his belt.  As Don stepped back against the wall Mikey spun his weapon, building up force, and then brought the end down unerringly against the hasp.

            The metal hasp popped off the door, taking the lock with it.  Mikey kicked it aside and pulled the door open, looking cautiously into the darkness beyond.

            Don brushed past him to walk through the door, disappearing into the gloom.  Mikey swallowed and looked back the way they’d come, but voices were already starting to echo down the corridor.  Squaring his shoulders, he followed Don, making sure to close the door securely so that their escape route wouldn’t be evident.

            “Don?” Mikey called hesitantly, unable to see even his fingers in front of his face.

            A tiny sliver of light shot into his eyes and he squealed, one hand coming up to rest on his heart.

            “Shh, quiet Mikey,” Don said as he approached, the pen light he was holding doing little to push back the blackness.

            “Do you want to tell me what we’re doing in here, wherever here is?” Mikey asked.

            “This is the part of the facility that they’ve been lying to the feds about,” Don explained.  “The extra containment space that they don’t really have.  Where’s your flashlight?”

            “Flashli . . . _oh_ ,” Mikey said, remembering he had one in his belt.

            Combining his light with Don’s, the pair illuminated the area where they were standing and then walked further inside.  The room they were in appeared to be cavernous; quite probably a warehouse at some point in the past.

            “Why don’t they just store barrels in here?” Mikey asked.  “I know it’s not whatever you said, fixed up right to hold radioactive waste, but it isn’t as though they care.”

            Don lifted his light to the ceiling and then pulled it back down again.  “They don’t want to work around the radioactive stuff, that’s why.  That Highsmith character knows exactly how dangerous those barrels of waste are when not properly stored and he doesn’t want to be near them.”

            “But it’s okay to dump his responsibility on other people,” Mikey said.

            “Literally,” Don murmured as he continued his exploration.

            “I’m liking him less and less,” Mikey grumbled.  “Can we kick his butt before we leave?”

            “Sure,” Don answered absentmindedly.

            Mikey knew that tone well and eyed his brother suspiciously.  Something about this space had called to the genius and it was apparently still talking to him. Without a little prompting, Don could take anywhere from five minutes to five hours to share.

            “Donny,” Mikey said, “what’s going on in that big brain of yours?”

            “Hmm?” Don hummed, his flashlight following packets of wiring that he’d located along the walls and ceiling.

            “What are you thinking about doing?” Mikey asked slowly, as though speaking to a six year old.

            Don blinked and looked over at his brother.  “Let’s blow it up.”

            Mikey stared at him.  “What?”

            “Blow it up,” Don repeated with more animation.

            “Just so we’re clear, what exactly are you wanting to blow up?” Mikey asked.  “’Cause I’m not sure blowing up a bunch of radioactive waste is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

            “No, no, Mikey,” Don said.  “We’ll just blow up this section of the building.  Look at it; there’s nothing here.  There’s a containment wall between the two sections to keep fire from spreading to the rest of the storage facility.  Those wires over there are for land lines, direct hard wired communication with the fire department.  They had to install those first when they requested the building permit.”

            “So how do you know they even work?” Mikey asked.

            “Because the fire department’s protocol with a facility of this nature is to test the lines on a set schedule,” Don answered.  “If they get no signal they investigate.  Highsmith wouldn’t want that to happen, so he’d make darn sure those lines were in perfect working order.”

            “Then why don’t we just cut the lines?  You know Donatello, sometimes simple is better,” Mikey said in a lecturing tone.

            “You didn’t let me finish,” Don said.  “A cut line would first initiate a call from the fire department.  Highsmith would just answer and say one of his men had an accident with the wires and they were repairing them.  He’d fix the wire and then fix us at the same time.”

            “You’re a genius,” Mikey said.  “You’ve gotta know how to destroy the phone line so it can’t be fixed.”

            “It’s just wiring, Mikey,” Don said.  “All you have to do to fix it is run a new length of cable and splice it into two clean ends.  Do you see that box up there?”

            Don was pointing his flashlight at a sealed metal box mounted near the ceiling.

            “Yeah,” Mikey said.

            “It’s a heat sensor,” Don told him.  “It’s also directly connected to the fire department via a different set of wiring.  If the wires are cut it pings back a signal to a centralized computer that initiates a call to Highsmith asking that he check the wires.  If however, a fire breaks out, the heat sensors inside send out an entirely different type of alarm.”

            Mikey’s brow lifted.  “The kind that makes firemen jump into their trucks and turn on their sirens?”

            “Exactly,” Don said with a grin.  “We could just start a fire, but the regular smoke detectors would go off and Highsmith would send his own people in here to put it out before it could set off the heat sensor.  Besides that, we couldn’t get a large enough fire going the conventional way.”

            “I suppose you’re gonna tell me you’ve already figured out how you’re gonna blow this place up,” Mikey said.  “And then you’ll say ‘but there’s a small catch, Mikey’.”

            Don lifted one hand in a placating gesture.  “I need my bag and something that will explode.”

            “Uh, huh,” Mikey said.  “Your bag that’s sitting in a locker back in the garage that’s probably heavily guarded by now.”

            “If you have any ideas, I’m open to them,” Don said.

            “You’re the idea guy,” Mikey protested.  “I just came along for the ride.”

            “You know, the garage is probably where we’ll find flammable liquids like gasoline or oil.  I saw a small storage closet in there that I’m hoping contains janitorial supplies because floor cleaners, disinfectants, furniture polish and things like that all burn easily,” Don said.

            “Didn’t you just say that setting a fire wasn’t gonna do the trick?” Mikey asked.

            “The fire is our starting point,” Don said.  “If we can find some pressurized cans in there I can rig up a nice little explosion that’ll take down part of the roof and spray fire all around this space.  The fire department should be able to see the flames from a couple of miles away.”

            “I like this plan as long as you tell me we’re not gonna be anywhere near this explosion of yours,” Mikey said.

            “The only thing we need to do is set everything up and start the fire.  We’ll have plenty of time to get away from here before the explosions start,” Don said.

            Together they walked back over to the metal door and Mikey pressed the side of his head against the door jamb in order to listen.

            “I think they’re gone,” he said.  Turning to look at Don, he asked, “Hey, weren’t there some large oxygen tanks in one of those lockers you opened?  The kind they use to refill the canisters on the masks?  Wouldn’t they do a good job of exploding?”

            Don looked at him in surprise.  “I hadn’t thought about them,” he admitted, “but yes, they would be perfect.”

            Carefully easing the door open, Mikey grumbled, “Let’s see if we can’t give ourselves a few more challenges.  You realize we’re gonna have to swipe a pallet jack so we can carry those tanks right?”

            “Yep,” Don said quietly.  “We have to get back to the garage, grab a pallet jack from the wash bay next door, load the tanks onto it along with all the flammables we can find, and get our rear ends back here without being seen.”

            “Piece of cake,” Mikey said sarcastically as he slipped through the door.

            Together they climbed the short set of stairs and stood in the corridor, looking around as they tried to get their bearings.

            “It would probably help if it weren’t so bright in here,” Don said.

            “You’re the electrician in the family,” Mikey said.  “Tell me what to break and I’ll break it.”

            “I never have to tell you at home,” Don said with a grin.

            “Remind me to laugh at that when we’re safe,” Mikey told him.

            “Come on, this way,” Don directed, turning into the corridor.  As Mikey followed, Don said, “If we keep making right turns, we should find ourselves back in the area of the garage.  I didn’t notice a maintenance room anywhere along our route, so we probably haven’t come across it yet.”

            “How many goons do you think Highsmith has working for him?” Mikey asked.

            Don thought for a second and then began counting them off, “There were ten security guards in that group that took us to visit Highsmith, including the four from the garage.  Two men handling the barrels, one in the control booth, and eight men from the trucks.  I’ve got twenty-two, including Highsmith.  It’s a good guess that there’s at least a couple more in a sealed security room somewhere.”

            “Let’s just round it off to thirty,” Mikey said, moving cautiously and staying close to the wall.  “It’s a lot less confusing.”

            For the next few minutes, neither of them spoke.  While the storage facility was large, it wasn’t huge, nor was it very complex.  They knew that eventually they’d be seen, especially if the staff split up to search for them. 

            Mikey spotted a locked door and hissed at Don, getting his attention.

            “’Electrical closet’,” Mikey read off the door.  “This what you’re looking for?”

            “I hope so,” Don answered, glancing around warily.

            “Shall I do the honors?” Mikey asked.

            “By all means,” Don said with a hint of amusement.

            Mikey slipped a small locking picking kit from his belt, extracted two slender pieces of metal from it, and began working on the lock.  Don listened for anyone who might be approaching, but his eyes were on Mikey.

            Whenever his little brother was really concentrating on something, the tip of his tongue would protrude from his mouth, as it was now.  Of the four brothers, Mikey was the least adept at picking locks.  Although Don would have had the door open already, he wasn’t going to say anything.  This was a good learning opportunity for Mikey, who seemed to grasp things faster when the situation was critical.

            The tumblers slid back with a click and Mikey said triumphantly, “Got it!”

            Holding the door open, Mikey waited for Don to precede him, and then followed his brother into the room, pulling the door shut behind them.  Neither flicked on the overhead lights, afraid someone would see them shining beneath the door.  Instead they relied on their flashlights to help them find what they were looking for.

            “Here’s the master panel,” Don whispered.

            The room they were in was small, barely large enough for the two of them.  Don slid the door off of the panel and focused his light on the circuit breakers inside, and then on the bundle of cables that fed into it from above.

            Mikey followed the direction of Don’s gaze and asked, “You gonna turn ‘em off or go for something more drastic?”

            “If I just throw the master switch, someone will come and flip it back on, Mikey,” Don said.

            “What happens if you slice through that big cable?” Mikey asked.

            “I’d light up like the fourth of July, the power would go out, and you’d have to finish this mission on your own,” Don answered with a grin.

            “Your sense of humor is really strange bro’,” Mikey said with a grimace.  Frowning, he asked, “Hey, if the power goes out, what’ll happen in that area where they keep the radioactive waste?”

            “It’ll be fine,” Don said.  “Federal regulations decree that they have backup generators in all containment areas.  Besides, I’m only concerned with the lights, not the entire power grid.  I sure wish I had my bo staff.”

            “Whatever your bo can do, my nunchucks can do better,” Mikey quipped.

            “My bo doesn’t have a metal chain on it,” Don told him, “and it has a nice long reach.  Do you think you can swing your weapon like a hammer without touching that chain?”

            “If I couldn’t I’d still be using a bo staff,” Mikey said, winking at his brother.

            “Now I know why Raph always pops you on the back of your head,” Don said, slipping a small screwdriver out of his belt.

            Very carefully, he inched the flat part of it into the opening next to a set of breakers labeled ‘lights’.  Don made sure to hold only the plastic handle and stopped pushing once he had the screwdriver far enough in so that it wouldn’t come loose.

            Stepping back, he held up a finger to indicate that Mikey should remain silent while he listened at the door.  Sure that no one was in the corridor, Don opened the door and stepped out of the room.

            Once Mikey saw that his brother was out of the way, he moved into the open doorway and pulled out one of his nunchucks.  Holding one wooden end, he brought the other back over his shoulder and then flipped it forward.

            The edge of the nunchuck slammed into the handle on the screwdriver, driving it into the electrical panel.  Sparks flew as Mikey swung the end of his weapon up and around, catching it as he jumped back into the corridor.

            A loud pop and a sizzling sound issued from where the screwdriver protruded from the circuit breaker.  Almost at that exact same instant, all of the lights went out.

            “Yes!” Mikey said loudly.

            “Shh,” Don urged from the darkness.  “Come on, let’s go.  We still have to avoid the emergency lights.”

            Even as he spoke, a dim light flickered on at the end of the hall.

            “Looks like Highsmith was too cheap to install very many of those,” Mikey observed.

            “Lucky for us,” Don said as he started jogging back towards the garage.

            “You know Donny,” Mikey said as he leaped up towards the emergency light box and smashed it with his nunchucks, “I can’t help thinking that there is probably a much easier way out of this entire predicament.”

            “Are you saying that running through dark halls in a building out in the middle of nowhere while trying to avoid being shot so we can stop a rich guy from illegally dumping radioactive waste is more complicated than it needs to be?” Don asked.

            Mikey shot a dirty look at his brother that wasn’t seen because of the darkness.  “If I knew what you just said I could answer that question.  Why do your plans always involve blowing something up?”

            “I hope that was a rhetorical question, because I’m not going to answer it,” Don said, turning down another corridor.

            Voices sounded from ahead of them and Don skid to a stop, pressing his carapace against the wall.  He felt Mikey move up next to him, remaining completely quiet until the voices drifted off in the opposite direction.

            “If I’m right, the door we used to exit the garage is just beyond the next turn,” Don said in a low voice.

            “Let’s go now, I think those guys were leaving the area,” Mikey whispered.

            “Slow and silent,” Don said, following his own advice.

            At the end of the corridor, Don peered around the corner and spotted the door they needed to go through.  One set of emergency lights shone directly above the door but for the moment, the area was empty.

            “Do you think anyone’s in the garage?” Mikey asked.

            Don shrugged.  “Stay here and keep watch.  I’m going to take a peek inside.  I’ll give you the all clear if the garage is empty.”

            “Okay,” Mikey said.

            Darting across the corridor, Don pulled the door open slightly and looked into the garage.  It appeared to be vacant and he turned to look at Mikey, lifting a thumb into the air so his youngest brother would know it was all right to join him.

            Mikey was practically on Don’s shell as they entered the garage.  He glanced longingly at the metal door that stood between him and the outside world, but the locking mechanism had a daunting appearance.  Although Mikey knew Don could get it open, he also knew Don was too obstinate to leave before they shut Highsmith’s operation down.

            As Don pulled open the locker where he’d stored his weapon and duffel bag, Mikey moved past him to a closet that was labeled ‘janitorial’.  Opening the door, he entered a small room filled with cleaning supplies.  Yanking a thick plastic bag out of a box, Mikey stepped out of the closet and snapped the bag open.

            “We can put your flammable stuff in this,” Mikey said, watching as Don set his duffel on a nearby bench and leaned back into the locker.

            “That’s perf . . . .” Don began.

            “Get your hands up!” a harsh voice yelled at them.

            Both of the Turtles froze.  They’d been so intent on their mission that neither of them had seen the guard enter the garage or even noticed that he was nearly on top of them.  Mikey released one end of the garbage bag and lifted his hands, silently berating himself for his inattentiveness.  He decided that if they managed to survive this outing, he was going to make Don swear never to tell Leo about this incident.

            Looking back over at Don, Mikey saw that his brother hadn’t moved, his body still bent slightly forward and one arm inside the locker. 

            “Get out of there or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” the guard said, stepping closer to Don.

            Faster than the blink of an eye, Don’s arm whipped out of the locker, his bo staff clutched tightly in his fist.  Whipping it around, he caught the guard’s wrist dead on, breaking bones on contact and forcing the man to release his hold on his weapon.

            The guard barely had enough time to open his mouth before Don’s bo came back up and cracked him solidly on his temple.  Toppling to the ground, the guard’s scream of pain never made it past his lungs.

            Mikey lowered his hands, his grin sheepish.  Don seemed to read his mind.

            “Our secret?” Don asked.

            “Shell yeah,” Mikey said.

            _“Jones report!”_

            Both of the brothers jumped, startled by the guard’s radio.  Mikey leaped over the bench and rolled the guard onto his back, seeing that the man’s badge said ‘Jones’.

            _“Jones!”_ the voice repeated.  _“What’s your ten?”_

            Mikey snatched the radio off his belt and cleared his throat.  “Area secure,” he said in an almost perfect impression of the guard’s voice.

            Don was staring at him, eyes wide, and Mikey grinned.

            _“Then get your ass up front so they don’t try to escape through the main entrance,”_ the voice ordered.

            Once more Mikey pushed the send button.  “10-4.”

            A crackle of static came through and Mikey switched the radio off, tossing it onto the guard’s chest.  He reached down to grab the guard’s arms and Don quickly caught the man’s ankles.  Together they carried him to the janitorial closet and set him down just outside.

            Mikey handed the garbage bag to Don who began picking through the supplies for items he could use in fashioning his explosive.  Meanwhile, Mikey found a roll of thick twine and used it to bind the guard’s arms and legs, stuffing a cleaning rag into the man’s mouth when done.

            As soon as Don had everything he could use, Mikey rolled the security guard into the closet and closed the door.

            Tucking both his duffel and the garbage bag into a corner, Don led the way over to the small door that would take them into the wash bay.  Slowly opening it, Don’s first glance told him that everything had been shut down, whether because they’d finished cleaning both trucks or because of the intruder alarm he didn’t know.

            “After you,” Mikey whispered near his brother’s head.

            Setting his jaw, Don stole onto the catwalk and sent his eyes around the room.  He didn’t see anyone in the control booth, but almost directly below him, the two workers were washing mud off the floor.

            When Don looked over his shoulder towards his brother, Mikey lifted his eye ridges and pointed down.  Don nodded, moving into position at the edge of the railing alongside the orange banded ninja.

            In unison, the duo jumped from the catwalk and landed on the two unsuspecting workers.  Their weight drove the men into the concrete floor and knocked them both out cold.

            Mikey spotted a pallet jack nearby, an empty pallet still seated on its forks.  He grabbed the lever, checking to see that it was in the lift position, and headed towards the double door.  Don dashed ahead of him and pressed the button that opened the door.  Once Mikey was in the garage, Don punched the control that would close the door, slipping through as it snicked shut.

            Together they laid four large oxygen tanks onto the pallet, bracing them with Don’s duffel and the garbage bag so they wouldn’t roll around.

            “Okay,” Mikey said, “a couple of long hallways and we’re home free.”

            “Don’t jinx it, Mikey,” Don said, checking to see if the corridor was clear.

            Holding the door open, he waved Mikey forward, and then moved up to jog alongside of him.

            They had just reached the first turn when they heard the sound of several pairs of feet running down the corridor and then the shouts that told them they’d been spotted.

            A bullet whipped past them as they yanked the pallet jack around the corner.  Reaching into his belt, Don pulled out one of his throwing stars and let it fly, striking the emergency light box unerringly.  Sparks flew in all directions and the light went out.

            “I can hit you in the dark!” Don called out as a warning.

            Voices from several different men broke into speech all at once and then one broke from the babble, silencing his partners.

            “We can pick you off without going down that hall,” the man said, emphasizing his point by firing his weapon down the corridor.

            Don threw himself to the floor behind the pallet jack, joining Mikey who was already there.  Another shot rang out, and then another, striking the wall just above them.

            Mikey turned his face towards Don.  “Wanna guess what happens if a bullet hits one of these tanks?”

            “I don’t have to guess,” Don replied.

            “Give up now or we’re all going to open fire!” the man warned.

            “Just whose bright idea was this anyway?” Mikey asked.

            Don didn’t get a chance to answer as a hail of bullets began to ricochet off the walls and ceiling all around them.

TBC…………………


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Word Count: 3,577  
> Rated: PG-13

            The gunfire stopped suddenly and the two trapped Turtles lay still, waiting.  A beam of light flicked on, its origin undoubtedly from a flashlight.  No one attempted to shine the light down the corridor where the brothers hid, instead letting it illuminate the T junction where the two corridors intersected.

            “You have fifteen seconds to give up and step into the light,” one of the guards called out.  “After that, we start shooting again.”

            “I hate guns,” Don whispered to Mikey.  “Did I ever tell you that?”

            “Couple of times,” Mikey said, sliding forward on the carpet.

            “Where are you going?” Don hissed.

            Mikey opened the garbage bag enough to reach inside.  Digging around for a second, he came out with a pressurized can of furniture polish and then tied the bag shut before crawling back to Don.

            “Four seconds!” the guard yelled.

            “Uh, hang on!” Don said loudly.  “I think my brother twisted his ankle!”

            “Nice try.  Two seconds,” the guard said.

            Don turned to look at his brother.  Mikey had taken one of his kunai from his belt and cut a piece off of his mask tails.  Tying it through the ring on the end of the kunai, Mikey glanced at Don and grinned before lobbing the can straight down the corridor.  It landed perfectly against the wall of the cross corridor, right out in plain sight.

            “Quick, give me your lighter,” Mikey said.

            “What makes you think I have a lighter?” Don asked him, lifting his eye ridges.

            Mikey gave him a surprised look.  “Because you’re Donatello.”

            Don grinned.  “Darn right I am,” he said as he pulled a lighter from his belt.

            With a sweep up his thumb, Don flicked the lighter to flame and lit the cloth on the kunai.  Mikey immediately threw the weapon towards the can and yelled, “Incoming!”

            The tip of the kunai pierced the can and the escaping contents exploded upon contact with the fire.  Men started screaming as the corridor turned into a flaming tunnel; the floor, walls, and ceiling ablaze.

            Don and Mikey leaped to their feet, wasting no time in pulling the pallet jack away from the scene as quickly as possible.  It wouldn’t take long for the guards to extinguish the fire and the duo intended to be gone before that happened.

            Moving as fast as they could with their heavy and dangerous load, the brothers reached the staircase that would take them into the warehouse.  The stairs were too narrow for the pallet jack, so Mikey jumped down to open the door and then Don passed items to him to be carried into the warehouse.

            Don kept watch as Mikey ran back and forth, then once everything had been removed, they turned the pallet jack itself on its side and angled it so they could carry it through the door.

            Mikey had set his flashlight on the floor to provide them with some illumination.  Now he scooped it up as Don secured the door behind them and focused the beam on the pile of things they’d brought in.

            His brother’s flashlight joined Mikey’s for a brief moment and then Don turned his light upward, walking slowly until he’d found the exact location he needed for the explosion to occur.

            “Mikey, bring the pallet jack over here,” Don said, standing still to mark the spot.

            Doing as Don asked, Mikey pulled the pallet jack into location and looked curiously at his brother.

            “Gonna burn this up too?” Mikey asked.

            “Might as well,” Don said.  “It’s got a battery inside that’ll add nicely to our explosion.  The wooden pallet will help fuel the fire, but we need to scrounge around for some other flammable things.  You take the left side, I’ll go right, and let’s see what we can come up with.”

            “Can we do this fast please?  The longer we’re in here, the better the odds are that Highsmith’s goons are gonna find us,” Mikey said as he hopped over to his assigned section of the warehouse.

            The space was mostly empty, but between them they managed to find a couple of wooden pallets, several cardboard boxes of various sizes, some rolls of shipping paper, a large bundle of old newspapers that had been stacked in a corner, and miscellaneous items of trash.

            Once they had layered everything around and over the pallet jack, Don set to work removing items from the garbage sack and arranging them in the pile.  There were quite a few pressurized cans in the collection, as well as highly flammable things like furniture polish, floor cleaner, disinfectants, and varnish.

            While Don created a design aimed at providing the maximum destructive force possible, Mikey dragged the oxygen tanks over and placed them in specific locations per his brother’s instruction.

            When they were done, the brothers stepped back and surveyed their handiwork.

            “Is that gonna make a big enough explosion?” Mikey asked.

            “Oh yes,” Don said, nodding his head.  “Some of those things by themselves might not do much, but mixing them together will produce a really big bang.  It’s the way the chemicals react to one another.”

            “Then the heat from that will explode the cans and oxygen tanks,” Mikey observed.

            “Just like bottle rockets,” Don said with a grin.  “It’ll send projectiles straight up through the roof and spray the walls with flaming debris.”

            “Which we won’t see ‘cause we will be long gone,” Mikey said meaningfully.

            “Yes Michelangelo, we’ll be out of here before the fire gets hot enough to set off the first of the chemical reactions,” Don assured him.

            “What are you waiting for?” Mikey asked.  “Growing old here.”

            Rolling his eyes, Don shouldered his duffel bag before kneeling next to the burn pile.  With a flick of his lighter, he set fire to a group of paper twists strategically placed near bundles of newspaper that had been coated with varnish.

            Don moved away and went to stand next to Mikey as he watched the fire slowly begin to grow.  Once he was sure that it would not go out, he touched Mikey’s arm and pointed towards the door.

            “We’re making a break for the nearest exit, right?” Mikey asked.

            “We can’t go back towards the garage, so we’ll either have to go out the front door or find an emergency exit along the way,” Don said.  “You do know they’ll probably all be heavily guarded, don’t you?”

            “I figured that one out on my own Donny, but thanks for sharing,” Mikey said.

            “Anytime,” Don said, grinning at him.  “That’s what big brothers are for.”

            Mikey made a face at him as he pushed open the door.  When he saw Don’s eyes widen, he looked up.

            Highsmith and several of his men stood at the top of the staircase, guns pointed right at them.

            Ninja reflexes kicked in before conscious thought could and Mikey yanked the door shut.  As it slammed into place, gunfire erupted and bullets began to hit the metal door.  Fortunately, the door was thick and solid, so the bullets didn’t penetrate.

            Unfortunately, there was no way to lock the door from the inside.  After a moment, the gunfire ceased and they heard footsteps coming down the stairs.  Gripping the door handle tightly, the brothers felt someone on the other side attempting to pull it open.

            “Might as well give up boys,” Highsmith said in a loud, gloating voice.  “The two of you can’t keep this door closed for long.”

            Don and Mikey looked at each other and then both glanced back at the fire.  Flames had discovered the varnish covered newspaper and were greedily consuming it, growing larger by the second.

            “What is it that Raph always says?” Mikey asked.  “Oh yeah, this night just keeps getting better and better.”

            A hard tug on the opposite side of the door made them both slide forward as the door momentarily separated from the jamb.  Digging in their heels, the pair pulled back, settling the door soundly in its frame once more.

            “Can’t keep this up,” Don said through gritted teeth.  “If they get the door open and see the fire, they’ll shoot us and leave us here to burn.  Or shoot us and put out the fire.  Or . . . .”

            “Yeah, yeah, got the point,” Mikey interrupted.  “Any way you look at it opening this door means we get shot.  We gotta jam something between the handle and the wall and find another way out of here.”

            “Jam it with what?” Don asked.  “Everything we found in here is on fire.”

            Mikey looked around the room and then his eyes fell on his brothers weapon.

            “Use your bo staff dude,” Mikey said.

            “No!” Don all but shouted.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to break in a new one?”

            “Dead ninjas don’t use bo staffs, Donatello,” Mikey pointed out.  “That fire is getting a whole lot hotter.”

            The door was nearly jerked out of their hands and it took every bit of muscle they had to keep it closed.

            “Oh man,” Don said in defeat, preparing to sacrifice his bo staff.  “Hold onto the door while I grab my bo and . . . shell, wait!  I’ve got something better.  Can you hold the door while I reach into my duffel?”

            “Make it fast bro’,” Mikey said, “I’m already pulling as hard as I can.”

            Fast as a snake, Don removed one hand from the door handle and plunged it into his bag, thanking fate that he hadn’t zipped it closed.  He found what he wanted at the bottom of the bag and pulled it out, swiftly wedging a two foot long metal wrench between the door handle and the wall.

            Breathing hard, the brothers stepped back.  The wrench held as the men on the other side of the door continued in their attempts to pull it open.

            “No wonder that bag is so heavy,” Mikey said.  “You wouldn’t happen to have a car in there too, would you?”

            Don laughed.  “I’ll try to invent one that’ll fit for the next time this happens.  In the meantime, we’re locked in here with an explosion that’s ready to go off at any minute.”

            “Gotta be an emergency exit in here someplace,” Mikey yelled as he started running towards the back of the warehouse.

            Racing after him, Don heard a small snapping sound come from the burning pile of debris.  The fire was covering nearly every part of the pyre he’d created and he knew they didn’t have long before the pressurized cans began to explode.  Once that began to happen, the biggest explosion would occur mere seconds later.

            Mikey’s triumphant yelp drew his attention back to his brother and he saw that Mikey had changed course, having spotted an emergency exit in a far corner of the warehouse.

            “No!” Mikey yelled upon reaching the double doors.  “No, no, no!”

            Don caught up to him just as Mikey started kicking the doors.  A heavy metal chain was wrapped through the door handles and held closed by a gigantic combination lock.

            “Isn’t it against the law to seal an emergency exit?” Mikey asked as Don examined the lock.

            “You can add that to the charges against Highsmith if we ever get out of here,” Don said as he turned the lock over and looked at the back.

            “If you still had your giant wrench you could break one of the handles off,” Mikey said.

            “Why don’t you run back there and get it for me?” Don told him absently, reaching into his belt for his lock picking kit.

            “You know Donny, you can be a little vicious when it comes to life or death situations,” Mikey told him darkly.

            A loud pop made Mikey cringe and he looked back to see fire shoot up about eight feet into the air and then scatter in several directions as metal debris rained down around the center of the warehouse.

            “Whatever you’re doing, you’d better do it faster,” Mikey urged.

            “You’re not helping,” Don said, concentrating on working the tumblers through the tiny hole in the back of the lock.

            An even louder crack sounded behind them and bits of shrapnel fell from a ten foot fire plume, some of it landing close to the brothers.  The flames had become a raging inferno and pressurized cans were shooting off like fireworks.

            “Don~ny . . . .” Mikey sang, his foot tapping impatiently as he looked back and forth between his brother and the fire.

            “Got it!” Don chortled, ripping the combination lock free from the chain.

            Together they grabbed the chain and unwound it from the door handles.  Another loud bang made them look at each other and then a high-sounding hiss began to echo throughout the warehouse.

            “Faster!” Don urged, pulling at the chain frantically.

            Mikey tore the last of it from the handles and together they pushed through the doors.  From behind them the hiss turned into a shrill whistle and the brothers lunged forward into a dead run.

            The explosion as the oxygen tanks finally overheated was deafening.  Don and Mikey threw themselves onto a grassy berm next to the pavement outside and covered their heads as the resounding concussion from the explosion blasted the air.

            Behind them, heavy parts of the oxygen tanks and the pallet jack burst through the roof, falling heavily into the parking lot.  Fire spurted up through the opening and then came down to eat at the old asphalt roof shingles.

            Alarms were ringing throughout the complex and as the explosions diminished, the Turtles could hear men shouting.  Quickly jumping to their feet, Don and Mikey darted into the cover of heavy shrubbery near the fence line.

            The entire parking lot was lit brightly by the fire.  The exit they’d found put the brothers at the far back of the building complex and they carefully made their way up towards the street where they’d first come in on top of the truck.

            Don figured four minutes had passed when he heard the first sirens.  He looked at Mikey and grinned, receiving a thumbs up in reply.

            Before they could decide on their next step, voices sounded nearby and they both instinctively ducked.

            “I don’t care,” Highsmith was saying in a shrill voice.  “Tell them you haven’t seen me; tell them I wasn’t here today.”

            “But sir, the fire marshal will insist we try to reach you,” a man responded, the worry in his tone obvious.

            “Then try to reach me,” Highsmith snapped.  “It won’t be your fault if I don’t answer the damn phone.  Give me the briefcase.”

            “He’s making a run for it,” Mikey whispered.

            “I’ll bet that briefcase contains all kinds of incriminating evidence,” Don whispered back.

            “We gonna let him go?” Mikey asked.

            “Shell no,” Don said with determination.

            Through the bushes they could see Highsmith standing next to a dark blue Cadillac, the windows nearly opaque.  Two armed guards were with him and neither looked very happy.

            “The fire’s contained in that empty warehouse,” one of the guards said.  “It shouldn’t take long to put out.”

            “Wonderful,” Highsmith said sarcastically.  “I’ve got clients to call and I can’t do that with firemen hanging all over me.  You deal with them so I can deal with the people who pay our salaries.”

            It was obvious to the two brothers that Highsmith was lying through his teeth and by the expression on the man’s face, the guard knew it too.

            “Is the side gate open?” Highsmith asked.

            “Yes sir,” the guard answered.

            Pulling his nunchucks from his belt, Mikey waggled his eye ridges at Don.  In response, Don shrugged his bag off of his shoulder and grabbed his bo staff.

            “Count of three,” Mikey said.  “One, two, _three_.”

            Breaking cover, the ninjas dashed across the pavement, staying low to the ground and silent.  With a giant leap, Mikey hurtled onto the hood of the car, sliding across the slick metal on his rump.  Nunchucks swinging, he brought one down to club the startled guard’s hand as the man reached for his weapon.  With the other, Mikey cracked the man on the side of his head and knocked him out cold.

            In a near simultaneous move, Don vaulted over the trunk of the car, his bo staff spinning like a propeller.  The second guard spun towards him, a heavy flashlight in his hand that he swung at Don.  With the end of his bo, Don rapped the guard’s fingers hard, making him drop his makeshift weapon and then Don brought the other end of the bo down against the back of the man’s knees.

            As the guard started to fall, Don popped him on the back of his head and sent him to dreamland.  A gasp behind him turned Don around and he saw Highsmith fumbling to pull something from the back of his waistband.

            The end of the bo came over almost faster than the eye could see and Don caught Highsmith beneath his chin, forcing the man’s head up and back.  Almost in the same instant, Mikey cracked Highsmith’s elbow with his nunchuck, making the man shriek as his arm dropped uselessly to his side.

            Tires screeched to a halt on the other side of the building, sirens fading out as the emergency vehicles began to arrive.  The tableau around Highsmith’s car lasted for another minute before Mikey walked around in front of the man and punched him right in the face.

            Highsmith’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he crumpled.  Don flipped his bo staff onto his back and looked at his brother.

            “Feel better now?” Don asked.

            “Shell yeah,” Mikey said, mimicking his brother’s earlier answer.  “Dude has a glass jaw.”

            “That’s good,” Don said, “because we don’t have time to wait around here.”

            “Were you planning on walking all the way home?” Mikey asked.  “I’ll bet the shell cells work now.”

            Don turned and looked at the Cadillac, his mouth spreading into a broad smile.  Mikey caught the direction of his glance and did a double take.

            “Dude,” Mikey said almost breathlessly.  “Can we?  Please, please say we can.”

            In answer, Don opened the driver’s side door, picking up Highsmith’s briefcase before sliding behind the wheel.  Mikey ran around to the other side of the car, darting over to grab Don’s duffel bag off the ground, and then he jumped in beside his brother.

            As Don started the car with keys that were already in the ignition, Mikey tossed the duffel bag into the back seat and nodded at the briefcase.  “What are you gonna do with that?”

            “Turn it over to the authorities,” Don said, the smile still plastered firmly on his face.

            Mikey frowned at him and said, “Did those fumes get to you bro’?  I hope you aren’t planning on walking up to a fireman and handing that briefcase over.”

            “Not quite,” Don said enigmatically as he deftly spun the steering wheel to swing the car in amongst the parked emergency vehicles.

            All of the fire department personnel were battling the blaze and hadn’t as yet been joined by any law enforcement.  When Don spotted a car labeled “District Investigator” he pulled up alongside it and rolled down his window.

            Picking the briefcase up off the seat, he leaned far over and tossed it into the other car.  Pressing the button to roll up the window, Don pulled away quickly, looking for the side gate that Highsmith had mentioned.

            Mikey turned around and watched behind them through the rear window but it appeared that no one had the slightest interest in their car.  When Don located the side gate, he drove through it onto a bumpy gravel road that ran parallel to the paved one which led to the containment building.

            Straightening on his seat, Mikey glanced to the left and saw police vehicles driving towards the scene of the fire they’d set.  Don was keeping the car at a moderate pace to avoid bottoming out on the unimproved back road and to prevent dust from giving them away.

            Concentrating on making their getaway, neither brother spoke.  Then the silence was broken by a buzzing sound.

            Mikey practically leaped off the seat before he realized it was his shell cell.  Don glanced at him and they both burst into laughter.

            “Aw man,” Mikey said as he fought to find his voice, “you think we’re in hot water?”

            Don inhaled deeply and said, “We will be if you don’t answer that phone.”

            Pulling it from his belt, Mikey looked at it then at Don.  “What’ll I say?” he asked.

            “Just tell him we’re safe and on the way home,” Don said.  “We’ll explain the rest later, after we find a place to dump the car.  If you try to tell him the story now, we won’t get to enjoy this fine ride.”

            Mikey settled against the leather upholstery and sighed.  As he flipped open the phone, Don reached forward and turned the radio on low, the rich sound system filling the car with sweetly relaxing music.

            It was a nice, if fleeting reward for their labors.  While Mikey talked to Leo, he lifted a hand towards his brother.  Don laughed softly and brought his up as well, celebrating their victory with a high three.

            Don decided that a short detour to an all-night drive-thru wouldn’t be all that bad of an idea either.

THE END


End file.
